UC-NRLF 


•.,"-•. 


[E  SOCIAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

OUR  INSTITUTIONS:    AN  ORATION 


H.    James 


• 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

DAVIS 


THE    SOCIAL    SIGNIFICANCE 


OUR    INSTITUTIONS: 

AN     ORATION 

DELIVERED    BY   REQUEST    OF    THE    CITIZENS    AT    NEWPORT,    R.  I. 

JULY  4TH,    1861. 
BY    HENRY    JAMES. 


! 


BOSTON: 

T  I  C  K  N  0  R      A  N  I)      F  1  E  L  I)  a  . 
1861. 


THE    SOCIAL   SIGNIFICANCE 


OF 


OUR    INSTITUTIONS: 


AN    ORATION 


DELIVERED    BY   REQUEST   OF   THE    CITIZENS   AT   NEWPORT,    R.  I. 


JULY  4TH,    1861. 


BY    HENRY    JAMES. 


BOSTON: 

TICKNOR      AND      FIELDS 
1861. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


This  facsimile  edition  of  The  Social  Significance  of 
Our  Institutions,  1861,  by  Henry  James  [Senior],  is 
limited  to  200  copies  printed  for  the  Americanist  Press, 
R.D.  2,  Pottstowri,  Penna.,  by  the  Rozov  Press,  Phila., 
1966. 


OEAT  ION. 


A  FRIEND  observed  to  me  a  few  days  since,  as  I  ac 
cepted  the  invitation  with  which  your  Committee  of 
Arrangements  has  honored  me,  to  officiate  as  your 
orator  on  this  occasion,  that  I  could  hardly  expect, 
under  the  circumstances,  to  regale  my  auditors  with 
Oie  usual  amount  of  spread-eagleism.  I  replied,  that 
that  depended  upon  what  he  meant  by  spread-eagle 
ism.  If  he  meant  what  was  commonly  meant  by  it, 
namely,  so  clearly  defined  a  Providential  destiny  for 
our  Union,  that,  do  what  we  please,  we  shall  never 
fall  short  of  it,  I  could  never,  under  any  circum 
stances,  the  most  opposed  even  to  existing  ones,  con 
sent  to  flatter  my  hearers  with  that  unscrupulous 
rubbish.  No  doubt  many  men,  whose  consciences 
have  been  drugged  by  our  past  political  prosperity, 
do  fancy  some  such  inevitable  destiny  as  this  before 
us,  —  do  fancy  that  we  may  become  so  besotted  with 
the  lust  of  gain  as  to  permit  the  greatest  rapacity 
on  the  part  of  our  public  servants,  the  most  undis 
guised  and  persistent  corruption  on  the  part  of  our 
municipal  and  private  agents,  without  forfeiting  the 
Providential  favor.  From  that  sort  of  spread-eagle- 


No ;  what  makes  one's  pulse  to  bound  when 
he  remembers  his  own  home  under  foreign  skies, 
is  never  the  rich  man,  nor  the  learned  man,  nor 
the  distinguished  man  of  any  sort  who  illustrates 
its  history,  for  in  all  these  petty  products  almost 
every  country  may  favorably,  at  all  events  te 
diously,  compete  with  our  own ;  but  it  is  all  simply 
the  abstract  manhood  itself  of  the  country,  man 
himself  unqualified  by  convention,  the  man  to 
whom  all  these  conventional  men  have  been  simply 
introductory,  the  man  who  —  let  me  say  it  —  for 
the  first  time  in  human  history  finding  himself  in 
his  own  right  erect  under  God's  sky,  and  feeling 
himself  in  his  own  right  the  peer  of  every  other 
man,  spontaneously  aspires  and  attains  to  a  far 
freer  and  profounder  culture  of  his  nature  than 
has  ever  yet  illustrated  humanity. 

Shallow  people  call  this  pretension  of  ours  the 
offspring  of  national  vanity,  and  stigmatize  it  as 
implying  the  greatest  immodesty  in  every  one 
who  asserts  it.  Is  it  not  the  same  as  saying, 
they  ask,  that  ignorance  is  as  good  as  experience, 
weakness  as  good  as  skill,  nature  as  good  as  cul 
ture,  the  crude  ore  as  good  as  the  polished  metal 
which  is  extracted  from  it?  I  will  show  you  the 
absurdity  of  this  criticism  in  a  few  moments,  when 
I  show  you  the  peculiar  foundation  which  the  sen 
timent  in  question,  the  sentiment  of  human  equal 
ity,  claims  in  our  historic  evolution  and  growth. 
For  the  present,  I  have  a  word  more  to  say  in 
regard  to  the  contrasts  of  European  and  American 
thought  and  aspiration. 


No  American,  who  is  not  immersed  in  abject 
spread-eagleism,  —  that  is  to  say,  no  American 
who  has  had  the  least  glimpse  of  the  rich  social 
promise  of  our  institutions,  or  of  the  free  play 
they  accord  to  the  spiritual  activities  of  our  na 
ture,  —  values  the  mere  political  prestige  of  his 
nation,  or  the  repute  it  enjoys  with  other  nations, 
as  the  true  ground  of  its  glory.  Much  less,  of 
course,  does  he  esteem  the  mere  personnel  of  his 
government  as  conferring  any  distinction  upon  him. 
Loyalty,  which  is  a  strictly  personal  sentiment,  has 
long  given  place  even  in  the  English  bosom  where 
it  was  native,  to  patriotism,  which  is  a  much  more 
rational  sentiment.  Loyalty  bears  to  patriotism 
the  same  relation  that  superstition  bears  to  relig 
ion.  The  zealot  worships  God,  not  as  an  infinite 
Spirit  of  Love,  but  as  a  finite  person :  not  for  what 
He  is  inwardly  in  himself,  but  for  what  He  may 
outwardly  be  to  the  worshipper.  He  adores  him, 
not  for  what  alone  renders  him  worthy  of  adora 
tion,  namely,  his  essential  humanity,  that  infinitely 
tender  sympathy  with  his  infirm  creature  which 
leads  him  forever  to  humble  himself  that  the  lat 
ter  may  be  exalted,  but  simply  because  he  is 
eminent  in  place  and  power  above  all  beings,  and 
so  is  able  to  do  all  manner  of  kindness  to  those 
who  please  him,  and  all  manner  of  unkind  ness  to 
those  who  displease  him.  Exactly  so  the  loyalist 
worships  his  king  or  his  queen,  —  not  for  their  ra 
diant  human  worth;  not  for  the  uses  their  great 
dignity  promotes  to  the  common  or  associated  life ; 


in  short,  not  from  any  rational  perception  of  their 
inward  adjustment  to  the  place  they  occupy;  but 
simply  because  they  do  occupy  that  eminent  place, 
simply  because  they  happen  to  be  crowned  king 
and  crowned  queen,  traditional  sources  of  honor 
and  dishonor  to  their  subjects.  In  both  cases  alike, 
the  homage  is  purely  blind  or  instinctive,  and, 
though  befitting  children,  is  unworthy  of  adult 
men.  Religion,  on  the  contrary,  clothes  the  Di 
vine  supremacy  with  essentially  spiritual  attributes, 
makes  His  perfection  the  perfection  of  character,  the 
perfection  of  love  and  wisdom,  and  of  power  thence 
alone  energized,  so  that  no  religious  man  wor 
ships  God  from  choice  or  voluntarily,  but  spontane 
ously,  or  because  he  cannot  help  himself,  so  much 
does  the  overpowering  loveliness  constrain  him. 
That  is  to  say,  every  man  truly  worships  God  in 
the  exact  measure  of  his  own  unaffected  goodness, 
purity,  and  truth.  And  it  is  thus  precisely  that 
the  patriot  loves  his  king  or  queen,  —  not  for  their 
traditional  sanctity,  not  for  their  exalted  privilege, 
not  for  their  conventional  remoteness,  in  short,  from 
other  men,  —  but  for  their  willing  nearness  to  them, 
that  is,  for  their  positive  human  use  or  worth,  and 
consequent  fitness  to  lead  the  great  honest  hearts 
they  represent.  In  one  word,  what  the  patriot  sees 
and  loves  in  his  king  is  his  country  and  his  country 
only ;  and  he  serves  him,  therefore,  as  the  spir 
itually  enlightened  man  serves  God,  not  with  a 
ceremonial  or  ritual  devotion,  but  with  a  cordial 
or  living  one,  with  a  service  which  only  exalts, 


9 


instead  of  any  longer  degrading,  either  of  the  par 
ties  to  it. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  the  sentiment  of  loyalty 
should  have  utterly  died  out  of  our  blood,  when 
even  that  higher  sentiment  of  country,  to  which 
alone  it  ministered  in  the  bosom  of  our  English 
ancestry,  has  in  its  turn  given  place  in  our  bosoms 
to  a  sentiment  still  higher,  that  of  humanity.  We 
are  the  descendants,  not  of  English  loyalists  by  any 
means,  but  of  English  patriots  exclusively ;  that  is, 
of  men  who  valued  royalty  only  so  long  as  it  served 
the  common  life,  and  when  it  grew  tired  of  that 
service,  and  claimed  only  to  be  served  in  its  turn, 

nhesitatingly  suspended  it  by  the  neck,  and  sent 
its  descendants  skipping.  And  this  English  patri 
otism,  which  was  itself  a  regenerate  loyalty,  or  a 
love  of  country  purified  of  all  personal  allegiance, 
has  itself  become  glorified  in  our  veins  into  a  still 
grander  sentiment, —  that  is,  from  a  love  of  country 
has  become  exalted  into  a  love  of  humanity.  It  is 
the  truest  glory  any  nation  may  boast,  that  the  love 
it  enkindles  in  the  bosom  of  its  children  is  the 
love  of  man  himself;  that  the  respect  it  engenders 
there  for  themselves  is  identical  with  the  respect 
which  is  due  to  all  men.  As  Americans,  we  love 
our  country,  it  is  true,  but  not  because  it  is  ours 
simply;  on  the  contrary,  we  are  proud  to  belong 
to  it,  because  it  is  the  country  of  all  mankind, 
because  she  opens  her  teeming  lap  to  the  exile 
of  every  land,  and  bares  her  hospitable  breast  to 
whatsoever  wears  the  human  form.  This  is  where 
2 


10 


the  ordinary  European  mind  inevitably  fails  to  do 
us  any  justice.  The  purblind  piddling  mercenaries 
of  literature,  like  Dickens,  and  the  ominous  scribes 
and  Pharisees  of  the  Saturday  Review,*  have  just 
enough  of  cheap  wit  to  see  and  caricature  the 
cordial  complacency  we  feel  in  our  virgin  and  beau 
tiful  mother;  but  it  takes  an  acumen  bred  of  no 
London  police-courts,  and  an  education  of  the  heart 
which  all  the  studies  of  Oxford  will  never  yield, 
to  see  the  rich  human  soul  that  vivifies  that  com 
placency,  that  burns  away  all  its  dross,  and  makes 
it  laughable  only  to  literary  louts  and  flunkies  who 
live  by  pandering  to  the  prejudices  of  the  average 
human  understanding. 

The  American  misses  in  European  countries  and 
institutions  this  exquisite  human  savor,  this  ex 
quisite  honor  which  is  due  to  man  alone,  and  this 
exquisite  indifference  which  is  due  to  persons.  In 
European  institutions,  —  I  do  not  say  in  existing 
European  sentiment,  for  that,  no  doubt,  is  greatly  in 
advance  of  the  institutions,  —  but  in  European  in 
stitutions  persons  are  everything  and  man  compar 
atively  nothing.  It  is  always  the  skilled  man,  or 
the  learned  man,  or  the  mighty  man,  or  the  noble 
man,  in  short  the  propertied  or  qualified  man  of 
some  sort,,  that  is  had  in  reverence ;  never  our 
common  humanity  itself,  which,  on  the  contrary, 
is  starved  in  garrets  in  order  that  the  man  of  qual 
ity  may  live  in  plenty,  is  ground  to  powder  by 
toil  in  order  to  keep  up  his  iniquitous  state,  is 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


11 


butchered  in  crowds  to  maintain  his  peace,  and 
rots  in  prisons  to  avouch  his  purity.  Abroad  every 
American  sees,  of  course  and  accordingly,  any 
amount  of  merely  political  energy  and  efficiency, 
sees  governments  flourishing  by  the  permanent 
demoralization  of  their  people.  He  sees  every  ap 
pliance  of  luxurious  art,  all  manner  of  imposing 
edifices,  of  elaborate  gardens  and  pleasure-places, 
the  deadliest  arsenals  of  war,  armies  innumerable, 
and  navies  disciplined  with  infernal  force,  all  con 
secrated  to  the  sole  purpose  of  keeping  up  the 
purely  political  status  of  the  country,  or  aggrandiz 
ing  its  own  selfish  aims  and  repute  to  the  eyes  of 
ther  nations  and  its  own  people.  And  he  cries 
aloud  to  his  own  heart,  May  America  perish  out 
of  all  remembrance,  before  what  men  blasphemous 
ly  call  public  order  finds  itself  promoted  there  by 
this  costly  human  degradation  !  Disguise  it  as  you 
will  in  your  own  weak,  wilful  way,  in  no  country 
in  Europe  has  the  citizen  as  yet  consciously  risen 
into  the  man.  In  no  country  of  Europe  does  the 
government  consciously  represent,  or  even  so  much 
as  affect  to  represent,  the  unqualified  manhood  of 
the  country,  its  lustrous  human  worth,  the  honest 
unadulterate  blood  of  its  myriad  beautiful  and  lov 
ing  bosoms,  its  fathers  and  mothers,  its  brothers 
and  sisters,  its  sons  and  daughters,  its  husbands 
and  wives,  its  lovers  and  friends,  every  throb  of 
whose  life  is  sacred  with  God's  sole  inspiration ; 
but  only  the  adulterate  streams  which  course 
through  the  veins  of  some  insignificant  conven- 


12 


tional  aristocracy.     Take  England  itself  for  an  ex 
ample  of  the  perfect  truth  of  my  allegations.    We 
may  easily  do  injustice  to  England  just  now ;  may 
easily  forget  the  shining  and  proud  pre-eminence 
which  belongs  to  her  political  development  among 
all  the  polities   of  the  earth.      Another  nation  so 
great,  so  vowed  in  its  political  form  to  freedom,  so 
renowned  for  arms,   for    art,    for  industry,  for  the 
intelligence  of  its  scholars,  for  its  public   and  pri 
vate    morality,  does  not  illustrate  human  annals ; 
and  yet,  because  she  now  thinks  of  herself  before 
she  thinks  of  us,  because  she  listens  to  the  prayer 
of  her    starving  operatives    before    she    listens  to 
the  demands  of  our  betrayed  nationality,  we  are 
ready  to  forget  her  glorious  past,  and  pronounce 
her  a  miracle  of  selfishness.     But  no  truly  human 
virtue  is  compatible  with  an  empty  stomach ;  and 
England,  like  everybody  else,  must  be  allowed  first 
of  all  to    secure    her    own  subsistence  before  she 
bestows  a  thought  upon  other  people.     I  will  not 
blame  England,  then,  for  her  present  timidity.     I 
will  never  forget  the  inappreciable  services  she  has 
rendered  to  the  cause  of  political  progress.     But 
just  as  little  can  I  be  blind  to  the  immense  limita 
tions   she  exhibits    when    measured    by  American 
humanitary  ideas.     She  claims  to  be  the  freest  of 
European  nations ;  and  so  she  is,  as  I  have  already 
admitted,   so    far  as   her   public  or  political  life  is 
concerned.      But    viewed  internally,   viewed   as  to 
her  social  condition,  you  observe  such  a  destitution 
of  personal  freedom  and  ease  and  courtesy  among 


13 


her  children  as  distinguishes  no  other  people,  and 
absolutely  shocks  an  American.  Conventional  rou 
tine,  a  wholly  artificial  morality,  has  so  bitten  it 
self  into  the  life  of  the  people,  into  the  national 
manners  and  countenance  even,  that  the  kindly 
human  heart  within  is  never  allowed  to  come  to 
the  surface,  and  what  accordingly  is  meant  among 
them  for  civility  to  each  other  is  so  coldly  and 
grudgingly  rendered  as  to  strike  the  stranger  like 
insult.  The  intensely  artificial  structure  of  society 
in  England  renders  it  inevitable  in  fact,  that  her 
people  should  be  simply  the  worst-mannered  people 
in  Christendom.  Indeed,  I  venture  to  say  that  no 
average  American  resides  a  year  in  England  with 
out  getting  a  sense  so  acute  and  stifling  of  its  hid 
eous  class-distinctions,  and  of  the  consequent  awk 
wardness  and  brusqiierie  of  its  upper  classes,  and  the 
consequent  abject  snobbery  or  inbred  and  ineradi 
cable  servility  of  its  lower  classes,  as  makes  the 
manners  of  Choctaws  and  Potawatamies  sweet  and 
Christian,  and  gives  to  a  log-cabin  in  Oregon  the 
charm  of  comparative  dignity  and  peace. 

For,  after  all,  what  do  we  prize  in  men?  Is  it 
their  selfish  or  social  worth?  Is  it  their  personal 
or  their  human  significance  ?  Unquestionably,  only 
the  latter.  All  the  refinement,  all  the  accomplish 
ment,  all  the  power,  all  the  genius  under  heaven, 
is  only  a  nuisance  to  us  if  it  minister  to  individual 
vanity,  or  be  associated  with  a  sentiment  of  aloof 
ness  to  the  common  life,  to  the  great  race  which 
bears  us  upon  her  spotless  bosom  and  nourishes 


14 


us  with  the  milk  of  her  own  immortality.  What 
is  the  joy  we  feel  when  we  see  the  gifted  man, 
the  man  of  genius,  the  man  of  high  conventional 
place  of  whatever  sort,  come  down  to  the  recogni 
tion  of  the  lowliest  social  obligations,  —  what  is  it 
but  a  testimony  that  the  purest  personal  worth  is 
then  most  pure  when  it  denies  itself,  when  it  leaps 
over  the  privileged  interval  which  separates  it  from 
the  common  life,  and  comes  down  to  identify  itself 
with  the  commonest?  This  sentiment  of  human 
unity,  of  the  sole  original  sacredness  of  man  and 
the  purely  derivative  sanctity  of  persons,  no  matter 
who  they  are,  is  what  we  are  born  to,  and  what  we 
must  not  fail  to  assert  with  an  emphasis  and  good 
will  which  may,  if  need  be,  make  the  world  re 
sound.  For  it  is  our  very  life,  the  absolute  breath 
of  our  nostrils,  which  alone  qualifies  us  to  exist. 
I  lived,  recently,  nearly  a  year  in  St.  John's  Wood 
in  London,  and  was  daily  in  the  habit  of  riding 
down  to  the  city  in  the  omnibus  along  with  my 
immediate  neighbors,  men  of  business  and  profes 
sional  men,  who  resided  in  that  healthy  suburb,  and 
fared  forth  from  it  every  morning  to  lay  up  honest, 
toilsome  bread  for  the  buxom  domestic  angels  who 
sanctified  their  homes,  and  the  fair-haired  cherubs 
who  sweetened  them.  Very  nice  men,  to  use  their 
own  lingo,  they  were,  for  the  most  part ;  tidy,  un 
pretending,  irreproachable  in  dress  and  deportment ; 
men  in  whose  truth  and  honesty  you  would  confide 
at  a  glance ;  and  yet,  after  eight  months'  assiduous 
bosom  solicitation  of  their  hardened  stolid  visages, 


15 


I  never  was  favored  with  the  slightest  overture  to 
human  intercourse  from  one  of  them.  I  never  once 
caught  the  eye  of  one  of  them.  If  ever  I  came  nigh 
doing  so,  an  instant  film  would  surge  up  from  their 
more  vital  parts,  if  such  parts  there  were,  just  as  a 
Newport  fog  suddenly  surges  up  from  the  cold  re 
morseless  sea,  and  wrap  the  organ  in  the  dullest,  fish 
iest,  most  disheartening  of  stares.  They  took  such 
extreme  pains  never  to  look  at  one  another,  that  I 
knew  they  must  be  living  men,  devoutly  intent  each 
on  disowning  the  other's  life  ;  otherwise  I  could 
well  have  believed  them  so  many  sad  well-seasoned 
immortals,  revisiting  their  old  London  haunts  by 
way  of  a  nudge  to  their  present  less  carnal  satisfac 
tions.  I  had  myself  many  cherished  observations  to 
make  upon  the  weather,  upon  the  lingering  green 
of  the  autumn  fields,  upon  the  pretty  suburban  cot 
tages  we  caught  a  passing  glimpse  of,  upon  the  end 
less  growth  of  London,  and  other  equally  conservative 
topics ;  but  I  got  no  chance  to  ventilate  them,  and 
the  poor  things  died  at  last  of  hope  deferred.  The 
honest  truth  is  what  Dr.  Johnson  told  Boswell,  that 
the  nation  is  deficient  in  the  human  sentiment. 
"  Dr.  Johnson,"  says  Boswell,  "  though  himself  a  stern, 
true-born  Englishman,  and  fully  prejudiced  against  all 
other  nations,  had  yet  discernment  enough  to  see, 
and  candor  enough  to  censure,  the  cold  reserve 
among  Englishmen  toward  strangers  (of  their  own 
nation).  'Sir,'  said  he, 6  two  men  of  any  other  nation 
who  are  shown  into  a  room  together,  at  a  house 
where  they  are  both  visitors,  will  immediately  find 


16 


some  conversation.  But  two  Englishmen  will  prob 
ably  go  each  to  a  different  window  and  remain  in 
obstinate  silence.  Sir,  we  do  not,  as  yet/  proceeded 
the  Doctor,  '  understand  the  common  rights  of 
humanity.' " 

These  common  rights  of  humanity  of  which  Dr. 
Johnson  speaks  are  all  summed  up  in  the  truth 
of  man's  social  equality ;  that  is,  every  man's  joint 
and  equal  dependence  with  every  other  man  upon 
the  association  of  his  kind  for  all  that  he  himself 
is  or  enjoys.  These  common  rights  of  humanity 
have  got  political  ratification  in  England,  as  they 
have  got  it  nowhere  else  in  Europe  out  of  Switzer 
land  ;  but  the  private  life  of  England,  as  Dr.  John 
son  charges,  is  shockingly  indifferent  to  them.  The 
moral  sentiment,  the  sentiment  of  what  is  excep 
tionally  due  to  this,  that,  or  the  other  person,  utterly 
dominates  in  that  sphere  the  social  sentiment,  the 
sentiment  of  what  is  habitually  due  to  every  man 
as  man.  It  is  this  unchallenged  primacy  of  the 
moral  life  over  the  social  life  of  England,  this  in 
tense  sensibility  among  her  scholars  to  personal 
claims  over  human  claims,  which  so  exalts  her  Phar 
isaic  pride  and  abases  her  true  spirituality,  which 
leaves  her  outwardly  the  greatest  and  inwardly 
the  poorest  of  peoples,  and  makes  the  homesick  be 
cause  better-nurtured  foreigner  feel,  when  exposed 
to  it,  how  dismal  and  dingy  the  very  heaven  of 
heavens  would  become  if  once  these  odiously  cor 
rect  and  lifeless  white-cravatted  and  black-coated 
respectabilities  should  get  the  run  of  it. 


17 


You  see  at  a  glance  that  this  penury  of  Eng 
land  in  all  spiritual  regards  is  owing  to  the  simple 
fact  that  not  man,  but  ^n^&ft-man,  is  the  key-note 
of  her  aspirations.  European  thought  generally 
and  at  best  is  peninsular,  —  that  is,  almost  insular,  — 
in  that  it  regards  European  culture  as  constituting 
the  probable  limits  of  the  human  mind.  But  Eng 
lish  thought  is  absolutely  insular,  in  that  it  makes 
England  the  actual  measure  of  human  develop 
ment.  Every  Englishman  who  lives  and  dies  an 
Englishman,  that  is  to  say,  who  has  not  been  made 
by  God's  grace  a  partaker  in  heart  of  the  common- 
wealth  of  mankind,  or  a  spiritual  alien  from  the 
mother  that  bore  him,  believes  that  not  Europe, 
but  England  itself,  one  of  the  smallest  corners  of 
Europe,  as  Judaea  was  one  of  the  smallest  corners  of 
Asia,  furnishes  the  real  Uttima  Thule  of  human  pro 
gress.  This  being  the  key-note  of  English  thought, 
the  pitch  to  which  all  its  tunes  are  set,  you  are 
not  surprised  to  see  the  sentiment  dominating  the 
whole  strain  of  English  character,  till  at  last  you 
find  the  Englishman  not  only  isolating  himself  from 
the  general  European  man,  but  each  individual 
Englishman  becoming  a  bristling  independent  un 
approachable  little  islet  to  every  other  Englishman, 
ready,  as  Dr.  Johnson  describes  them,  to  leap  out 
of  the  windows  rather  than  hold  that  safe  and 
salutary  parley  with  each  other  which  God  and 
nature  urge  them  to;  so  that  probably  a  huger 
amount  of  painful  plethoric  silence  becomes  an 
nually  accumulated  under  English  ribs  than  befalls 


18 


the  whole  world  beside,  and  an  amount  of  spirit 
ual  numbness  and  imbecility  generated  which  is 
not  to  be  paralleled  by  anything  this  side  of  old 
Judaea.  And  it  is  exactly  the  rebound  of  his  thought 
from  all  this  social  obstruction  and  poverty  which 
causes  the  American  wayfarer's  heart  to  dance  with 
glee  when  he  remembers  his  own  incorrect  and 
exceptionable  Nazareth,  his  own  benighted  but  com 
fortable  and  unsuspecting  fellow-sinners,  who  are 
said  to  sit  sometimes  with  their  tired  feet  as  high 
as  their  head,  who  light  their  innocent  unconscious 
pipes  at  everybody's  fire,  and  who  occasionally, 
when  the  sentiment  of  human  brotherhood  is  at 
a  white  heat  in  their  bosom,  ask  you,  as  a  gentle 
man  from  Cape  Cod  once  asked  me  at  the  Astor 
House  table,  the  favor  of  being  allowed  to  put 
his  superfluous  fat  upon  your  plate,  provided,  that 
is,  the  fat  is  in  no  way  offensive  to  you.  That 
the  forms  in  which  human  freedom  expresses  itself 
in  these  latitudes  are  open  to  just  criticism  in 
many  respects,  I  cordially  admit,  and  even  insist; 
but  he  who  sees  the  uncouth  form  alone,  and  has 
no  feeling  for  the  beautiful  human  substance  within 
it,  for  the  soul  of  fellowship  that  animates  and  re 
deems  it  of  all  malignity,  would  despise  the  shape 
less  embryo  because  it  is  not  the  full-formed  man, 
and  burn  up  the  humble  acorn  because  it  is  not 
yet  the  branching  oak.  But  the  letter  is  nothing, 
the  spirit  everything.  The  letter  kills,  the  spirit 
alone  gives  life  ;  and  it  is  exclusively  to  this  un 
deniable  spiritual  difference  between  Europe  and 


19 


America,  as  organized  and  expressed  in  our  own 
constitutional  polity,  that  all  our  formal  differences 
are  owing.  Our  very  Constitution  binds  us,  that 
is  to  say,  the  very  breath  of  our  political  nostrils 
binds  us,  to  disown  all  distinctions  among  men,  to 
disregard  persons,  to  disallow  privilege  the  most 
established  and  sacred,  to  legislate  only  for  the 
common  good,  no  longer  for  those  accidents  of 
birth  or  wealth  or  culture  which  spiritually  indi 
vidualize  man  from  his  kind,  but  only  for  those 
great  common  features  of  social  want  and  depend 
ence  which  naturally  unite  him  with  his  kind,  and 
inexorably  demand  the  organization  of  such  unity. 
It  is  this  immense  constitutional  life  and  inspira 
tion  we  are  under  which  not  only  separate  us 
from  Europe,  but  also  perfectly  explain  by  antag 
onism  that  rabid  hostility  which  the  South  has  al 
ways  shown  towards  the  admission  of  the  North 
to  a  fair  share  of  government  patronage,  and  which 
now  provokes  her  to  the  dirty  and  diabolic  struggle 
she  is  making  to  give  human  slavery  the  sanction 
of  God's  appointment. 

When  I  said  awhile  ago  that  an  American,  as  such, 
felt  himself  the  peer  of  every  man  of  woman  born,  I 
represented  my  hearers  as  asking  me  whether  that 
claim  was  a  righteous  one ;  whether,  in  fact,  he 
whose  conscience  should  practically  ratify  it  in  ap 
plication  to  himself  would  not  thereby  avouch  his 
own  immodesty,  —  confess  himself  devoid  of  that 
humility  which  is  the  life  of  true  manhood.  To  this 
question  I  reply  promptly,  No  !  for  this  excellent 


20 


reason,  —  that  the  claim  in  question  is  by  no  means 
a  distinctive  personal  claim,  but  a  claim  in  behalf  of 
every  man.  When,  by  virtue  of  our  national  gen 
esis  and  genius,  I  claim  before  God  and  man  a  right 
ful  equality  with  every  other  man,  what  precisely  is 
it  that  I  do  ?  Do  I  claim  for  myself  an  equality  of 
wit,  of  learning,  of  talent,  of  benevolence,  with  this, 
that,  or  the  other  special  person  whom  you  may 
name  as  remarkable  for  those  endowments  ?  Do  I 
mean  to  allege  my  private  personal  equality  with 
all  other  persons ;  my  equal  claim,  for  example,  to 
the  admiring  or  sympathetic  homage  of  mankind, 
with  Shakespeare,  with  Washington,  with  Franklin  ? 
No  man  who  is  not  an  ass  can  believe  this ;  and  yet 
you  perpetually  hear  the  paid  scribes  of  old-fogyism 
repeating  the  slander  throughout  the  world,  as  if  it 
were  the  most  indisputable  of  truths.  Nothing  is 
more  common  than  to  hear  persons  who  are  disaf 
fected  to  the  humane  temper  of  our  polity  affecting 
to  quote  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  saying 
that  all  men  are  born  equal,  and  under  cover  of 
that  audacious  forgery  exposing  it  to  ridicule.  The 
Declaration  is  guilty  of  no  such  absurdity.  It 
does  not  say  that  all  men  are  born  equal,  for  it 
is  notorious  that  they  are  born  under  the  greatest 
conceivable  inequalities,  —  inequalities  of  heart  and 
head  and  hand,  —  inequalities  even  of  physical  form 
and  structure ;  but  it  says  that,  notwithstanding 
these  inequalities,  they  are  all  created  equal,  —  that 
is,  are  all  equal  before  God,  or  can  claim  no  supe 
rior  merit  one  to  another  in  his  sight,  being  all 


21 


alike  dependent  upon  his  power,  and  possessing 
a  precisely  equal  claim,  therefore,  each  with  the 
other,  to  the  blessings  of  his  impartial  providence. 
The  inequalities  under  which  men  are  born,  or 
which  they  inherit  from  their  forefathers,  are  the 
needful  condition  of  their  individuality,  of  their 
various  personal  identity.  The  framers  of  the 
Declaration  saw  this  as  well  as  anybody,  but  they 
also  saw,  and  so  in  effect  said,  that  however  much 
men  may  differ  among  themselves,  it  was  yet  not 
these  personal  differences  which  commend  them  to 
each  other's  true  respect,  but  rather  that  common 
human  want  which  identifies  them  all  in  the  Divine 
regard  by  making  them  all  equal  retainers  of  His 
sovereign  bounty.  No  man  not  a  fool  can  gainsay 
this,  and  no  man  not  a  fool,  consequently,  can 
pretend  that  when  I  urge  this  constitutional  doc 
trine  of  human  equality  I  have  anything  whatever 
to  say  of  myself  personally  regarded,  or  as  discrimi 
nated  from  other  persons,  but  only  as  SOCIALLY  regard 
ed,  —  that  is,  as  united  with  all  other  persons.  In 
short,  it  is  not  a  claim  urged  on  my  own  behalf 
alone,  but  in  behalf  of  every  other  man  who  is 
too  ignorant  or  too  debased  by  convention  to  assert 
it  for  himself. 

Our  political  Constitution,  like  every  other  great 
providential  stride  in  human  affairs,  was  intention 
ally  educative ;  was  designed  to  gather  us  together 
under  the  discipline  of  well-disposed  but  often  sore 
ly  tried  and  disheartened  political  guides,  in  order 
finally  to  draw  us  fully  forth  out  of  the  land  of  dark- 


22 


ness  and  the  house  of  bondage.  The  sole  great  aim 
of  our  political  Constitution  has  been  gradually  to 
induct  us  out  of  errors  and  evils,  which  no  Pagan 
Jew  was  ever  more  slow  and  reluctant  to  suspect 
than  we  are,  into  a  new  and  far  more  grandly 
human  consciousness,  into  a  land  of  everlasting 
righteousness  and  peace.  .  Not  one  of  its  literal 
framers  ever  had  the  faintest  foresight  of  its  ulti 
mate  scientific  destination,  any  more  than  Moses  had 
of  the  Messiah  whom  he  prefigured ;  any  more  than 
Isaiah  or  Jeremiah  had  of  the  tremendous  spiritual 
scope  of  the  prophecies  which  uttered  themselves 
through  their  rapt  and  dizzy  imaginations.  The 
scientific  promise  of  our  polity  is  only  to  be  under 
stood  by  watching  its  practical  unfolding,  by  observ 
ing  the  expansive  influence  it  has  hitherto  exerted, 
and  is  now  more  than  ever  exerting,  upon  the  pop 
ular  mind  and  upon  the  popular  heart.  View  it 
either  positively  or  negatively,  its  influence  is  the 
same.  In  its  negative  aspect,  —  its  aspect  toward 
Egypt,  which  is  the  European  conception  of  man's 
true  state  on  earth,  —  it  denies  all  absoluteness  both 
to  persons  and  institutions,  by  boldly  resolving  what 
is  the  highest  of  personalities,  namely,  the  king, 
and  what  is  the  most  sacred  of  institutions,  namely, 
the  Church,  both  alike  from  a  power  into  the 
servant  of  a  power,  from  a  righteousness  into  the 
symbol  of  a  righteousness,  from  a  substance  into 
the  shadow  of  a  substance ;  this  substance  itself 
being  those  great  disregarded  instincts  of  human 
unity  or  fraternity  which  all  along  the  course  of 


23 

history  have  been  patiently  soliciting  scientific  rec 
ognition,  in  order  to  put  on  organic  form  and  cover 
the  earth  with  holiness  and  peace.  In  its  positive 
aspect,  —  the  aspect  it  bears  toward  Canaan,  — 
which  means  the  supremacy  of  man's  associated 
life  over  his  individual  one,  it  makes  my  private 
righteousness,  or  that  which  inwardly  relates  me 
to  God,  utterly  posterior  to,  and  dependent  upon, 
my  public  righteousness,  or  that  which  relates  me 
to  my  fellow-man.  How  is  it  possible,  therefore, 
that  its  practical  effect  should  be  otherwise  than 
educative,  —  educative,  too,  in  the  very  profoundest 
manner,  that  is,  out  of  all  evil  into  all  good  ?  Its 
direct  influence  is  to  modify  or  enlarge  my  private 
conscience,  the  consciousness  I  have  of  myself  as  a 
moral  being,  a  being  independent  of  my  kind  and 
capable  of  all  manner  of  arrogant  presumptuous 
private  hope  toward  God,  into  a  public  conscience, 
into  a  consciousness  of  myself  as  above  all  things 
a  social  being  most  intimately  and  indissolubly  one 
with  my  kind,  and  incapable  therefore  of  any 
blessing  which  they  do  not  legitimately  share.  It 
laughs  at  the  pretensions  of  any  person  however 
reputable,  and  of  any  institution  however  vener 
able,  to  claim  an  absolute  divine  sanctity,  —  that 
is,  a  sanctity  irrespective  of  his  or  its  unaffected 
human  worth ;  and  it  gradually  so  inflames  the  mind 
with  its  own  august  spiritual  meaning,  so  quickens 
it  with  its  own  vivid  and  palpitating  divine  sub 
stance,  that  the  conscience  which  is  governed  by  it 
of  necessity  finds  itself  regenerating,  finds  itself 


24 


expanding  from  a  petty  drivelling  and  squeaking 
witness  of  one's  own  righteousness,  into  the  clear 
and  ringing  and  melodious  testimony  of  God's  sole 
righteousness  in  universal  man. 

The  European  priest  and  king  were  at  best  only 
theoretically  perfect,  both  alike  having  always  been 
actually  below  the  spirit  of  their  great  office.  Their 
office  was  purely  ministerial  and  typical,  while  they 
themselves  had  always  the  stupidity  to  regard  it 
as  magisterial  and  final,  as  constituting  in  fact  its 
own  end.  The  office  of  the  Christian  priesthood 
has  always  been  to  typify  the  spotless  inward  pu 
rity,  the  office  of  the  Christian  royalty  to  typify 
the  boundless  outward  power,  which,  by  virtue  of 
the  Incarnation,  or  of  God's  personal  indwelling  in 
human  nature,  shall  one  day  characterize  universal 
man.  Every  man's  heart  and  mind,  by  reason  of 
their  infinite  source,  insatiably  crave,  the  one  that 
perfect  righteousness  which  is  peace  towards  God, 
the  other  that  perfect  knowledge  which  is  com 
mand  over  Nature.  And  the  priest  and  the  king 
have  existed  only  to  authenticate  this  insatiate 
longing,  and  formally  prefigure  its  eventual  exact 
fulfilment.  European  culture  accordingly  was  estab 
lished  upon  this  typical  and  transitory  basis  of 
Church  and  State,  the  one  representing  the  infi 
nite  Divine  righteousness  which  is  incarnated  in 
universal  man ;  the  other  the  infinite  Divine  power 
which  is  engendered  of  such  righteousness.*  But 
no  actual  churchman  and  no  actual  statesman  ever 

*  See  Appendix  B. 


25 


grasped  the  grand  humanitary  prophecy  of  his 
office.  Each  supposed  his  office  to  be  absolutely, 
not  representatively,  sacred ;  supposed  it  to  be  valid 
in  itself,  and  not  solely  for  its  uses  to  the  social 
development  of  the  race.  The  priest  claimed  for 
the  Church  an  absolute  divine  sanctity,  a  sanctity 
irrespective  of  the  education  it  ministered  to  the 
popular  heart ;  and  the  king  claimed  for  the  State 
an  absolute  divine  authority,  an  authority  unde- 
rived  from  the  elevation  it  afforded  to  the  popular 
thought :  so  that  the  sum  of  European  culture  in  a 
religious  way  has  scarcely  amounted  to  anything 
more  than  a  practical  desecration  of  the  priestly 
office,  or  a  secularizing  of  the  Church  by  a  diffu 
sion  of  the  priestly  prerogative  among  the  laity ; 
as  the  sum  of  its  political  progress  has  consisted 
in  limiting  the  royal  prerogative,  or  democratizing 
the  government,  by  diffusing  it  among  the  people. 
In  short,  Protestantism  and  constitutional  liberty 
are  the  topmost  waves  of  European  progress,  the 
bound  beyond  which  European  thought  cannot  le 
gitimately  go,  —  the  one  denying  the  Church  as  an 
absolute  Divine  substance,  the  other  denying  the 
State  as  an  absolute  Divine  form.  No  overt  aim  is 
there  practised  towards  a  positive  realization  of  the 
idea  embodied  in  our  institutions,  which  is  that  of  a 
perfect  human  society  or  fellowship,  in  which  every 
member  shall  be  alike  sacred  before  God  and  alike 
privileged  before  man.  The  ingrained  inveterate 
Pharisaism  of  the  English  mind  is  so  frankly  obtuse 
to  the  conception  of  a  Divine  or  universal  righteous- 


26 


ness  on  the  earth,  and  the  complacent  Sadduceeism 
of  Continental  thought  begets  such  an  indifference 
to  that  great  expectation,  that  one  can  see  no  hope 
for  Europe  socially  but  in  the  absorption  of  her 
effete  nationalities  by  a  new  Northern  invasion,  and 
the  consequent  infusion  of  a  ruddier  blood  into  the 
veins  of  her  languid  populations. 

But  however  this  may  be,  we  in  this  hemi 
sphere,  at  all  events,  have  no  European  problems 
to  solve,  and  are  not  called  upon  in  any  manner  to 
repeat  the  European  experience.  We  inherit  the  so 
lution  which  Europe  has  already  given  to  her  own 
peculiar  problems,  and  start  upon  our  distinctive 
career  from  the  basis  of  her  most  approved  expe 
rience.  Europe  has  made  religion  an  affair  of  the 
laity  as  much  as  of  the  clergy ;  government,  an 
affair  of  the  people  as  much  as  of  the  aristocracy. 
We  inherit  her  ripest  culture  in  both  of  these  particulars. 
We  inherit  Protestantism  and  constitutional  liber 
ty  ;  but  there  is  this  vast  difference  between  us  and 
them,  ive  begin  where  they  leave  off.  Like  all  heirs,  we 
enter  upon  a  full  fruition  of  the  estate  which  it 
cost  them  their  best  blood  to  found  and  mature. 
Thus  Protestantism  is  not  to  us  the  bright  expan 
sive  heaven  to  which  all  their  religious  aspiration 
ascends.  It  is  rather  the  solid,  compact,  somewhat 
dingy  and  disagreeable  earth  upon  which  our 
feet  are  planted,  only  in  order  to  survey  entirely 
new  and  infinitely  more  inviting  heavens.  And 
constitutional  liberty  is  not  the  welcome  haven  to 
us  it  has  ever  been  to  them,  is  not  to  us  the  same 


broad  protective  anchorage  to  which,  over  weary 
wastes  of  ocean  and  through  alternate  sickening 
calm  and  driving  tempest,  their  political  bark  has 
been  always  steering.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  our 
port  of  departure,  whence  with  swelling  sails  we 
confidently  voyage  forth  to  tempt  unknown  seas, 
and  lay  open  lands  as  yet  untrodden  by  human 
feet.  Protestantism  vacates  the  priestly  pretension, 
by  turning  religion  into  an  affair  of  the  congrega 
tion.  We  applaud  this,  but  go  further,  in  mak 
ing  religion  an  affair  of  the  individual  conscience 
exclusively,  with  which  neither  priest  nor  congre 
gation  has  the  least  right  to  intermeddle.  So  con 
stitutional  liberty,  which  is  the  European  ideal  of 
liberty,  vacates  the  divine  right  of  kings,  by  com 
plicating  the  royal  power  with  numerous  cunning 
constitutional  checks  and  balances.  But  the  liber 
ty  we  assert,  or  which  constitutes  our  ideal,  does 
not  flow  from  any  man-made  constitution  under 
heaven,  but  is  one  on  the  contrary  which  all  such 
constitutions  are  bound  under  fatal  penalties  sim 
ply  and  servilely  to  reflect,  being  the  liberty  which 
is  identical  with  the  God-made  constitution  of  the 
human  mind  itself,  and  which  consists  in  the  in 
alienable  right  of  every  man  to  believe  according 
to  the  unbribed  inspiration  of  his  own  heart,  and 
to  act  according  to  the  unperverted  dictates  of  his 
own  understanding.  In  short,  they  affirm  the  in 
alienable  sanctity  and  freedom  of  the  nation  as 
against  other  nations ;  we,  the  inalienable  sanctity 
and  freedom  of  the  subject  as  against  the  nation. 


28 


They  say  that  every  nation  is  sacred  by  virtue  of 
its  nationality,  or  has  an  inviolable  title  to  the 
respect  and  homage  of  all  other  nations.  We  say 
that  every  man  is  similarly  sacred  by  virtue  of  his 
humanity,  and  has  an  inviolable  title  to  the  love 
and  respect  of  all  other  men.  Thus  they  truly 
assert  the  Divine  Incarnation  in  humanity ;  but 
they  limit  it  to  the  public  sphere  of  life,  to  the 
national  will  and  the  national  intelligence.  We 
do  this,  but  we  do  much  more  also,  for  we  prac 
tically  ratify  the  Incarnation  as  a  private  no  less 
than  a  public  truth,  as  sanctifying  the  individual 
life  indeed  far  more  profoundly  than  the  common 
one.  They  laugh  at  us  because  we  set  the  pulpit 
to  the  tune  of  the  streets,  and  expect  our  gover 
nors  to  reflect  the  wisdom  of  the  farm-yard  and 
the  factory.  But  this  is  because  they  do  not  know 
that  we,  unlike  themselves,  are  without  ecclesias 
tical  and  political  conscience,  our  very  Church  and 
State  being  themselves  exclusively  human  and  so 
cial.  We  are  no  mere  civil  polity,  designed,  like 
those  of  the  Old  World,  to  lead  men  out  of  bar 
barism  into  civilization.  On  the  contrary,  we  find 
them  citizens,  and  out  of  citizens  aspire  to  make 
them  men.  We  are  at  bottom  nothing  more  and 
nothing  less  than  a  broad  human  society  or  broth 
erhood,  of  which  every  man  is  in  full  membership 
by  right  of  manhood  alone  ;  and  what  we  seek  to 
do  is  to  turn  our  nominal  Church  and  State  into 
the  unlimited  service  of  this  society.  In  fact,  we 
declare  the  childhood  of  the  race  forever  fairly  past, 


29 

and  its  manhood  at  least  entered  upon.  We  deny 
the  ability  of  any  church,  Catholic  or  Protestant, 
to  sanctify  any  human  being,  or  even  enhance  the 
sanctity  he  derives  from  his  creative  source.  We 
deny  the  ability  of  any  government,  arbitrary  or 
constitutional,  to  enfranchise  the  human  mind,  or 
even  enhance  the  freedom  which  inheres  in  its 
God-given  constitution.  We  maintain,  on  the  con 
trary,  that  the  Church  can  only  and  at  best  de 
velop  the  righteousness  which  every  man  derives 
in  infinite  measure  from  God ;  and  that  the  State 
can  only  and  at  best  promote  the  freedom  which 
Divinely  inheres  in  his  very  form  as  man  :  so 
leaving  every  man's  religion  to  the  sole  inspiration 
of  the  Divine  Good  in  his  own  heart,  every  man's 
freedom  to  the  sole  arbitrament  of  the  Divine 
Truth  in  his  own  understanding.  In  short,  we 
practically  affirm  the  literal  verity  of  the  Divine 
Incarnation  in  every  form  of  human  nature,  the 
unlimited  indwelling  of  the  infinite  Godhead  in 
every  man  of  woman  born ;  so  turning  every  man 
by  the  sheer  pith  of  his  manhood  into  mitred 
priest  and  crowned  king,  or  avouching  ourselves 
finally  to  our  own  consciousness  and  the  world's 
willing  recognition  as  a  faultless  human  society, 
instinct  with  God's  unspeakable  delight  and  appro 
bation.* 

Such,  my  friends,  I  conceive  to  be  our  undeniable 
inward  significance  as  a  nation.  Such  the  bright 
consummate  flower  of  manhood,  which  is  spiritually 

*  See  Appendix  C. 


30 


disengaging  itself  from  the  coarse  obscuring  husks 
of  our  literal  Democracy,  consisting  in  the  gradual 
but  complete  subjugation  of  the  selfish  instinct  in 
our   bosoms  to   the   service  of  the  social   instinct. 
Such  is  the  great  and  righteous  temper  of  mind 
to  which  we  are  Divinely  begotten ;  such  the  pa 
ternal   animating   spirit   that   shapes   our   constitu 
tional  polity,  that  originally  gave  us  birth  as  a  na 
tion,  and  that  even  now,  in  this  day  of  seeming 
adversity,  gives  us  a  conscience   of  rectitude  and 
invincible  might  which  is  itself  incomparably  richer 
than  all  prosperity.     It  is  idle  to  talk,  —  as  silly 
people,  however,  will  talk,  as  all  people  will  talk 
whose  gross  grovelling  hearts  go  back  to  the  flesh-pots 
of  Egypt,  when  they  eat  bread  to  the  full,  —  it  is  idle  to 
talk  of  our  political  troubles  as  springing  up  out 
of  the   ground,  as  having   no   graver   origin  than 
party  fanaticism  or  folly.     These  troubles,  on  the 
contrary,  are  the  inevitable  fruit  of  our  very  best 
growth,  the  sure    harbingers,  I   am   persuaded,  of 
that  rising  Sun  of  Eighteousness  whose  beams  shall 
never   again   know   eclipse.     They   are   merely  an 
evidence,  on  a  larger  scale  and  in  a  public  sphere, 
of  the  discord  which  every  righteous  man  perceives 
at  some  time  or  other  to  exist  between  his  essen 
tial  human  spirit  and  his  perishable  animal  flesh. 
For  every  nation  is  in  human  form,  is  in  fact  but  an 
aggregate  or  composite  form  of  manhood,  greatly 
grander  and  more  complex  than  the  simple  forms 
of  which  it  is  made  up,  but  having  precisely  the 
same  intense  unity  within  itself,  and  claiming,  like 


31 


each  of  them,  a  quickening  controlling  spirit,  and 
an  obedient  servile  body.  This  animating  control 
ling  spirit  of  our  national  polity,  like  that  of  our 
own  private  souls,  is  Divine,  comes  from  God  ex 
clusively,  and  is  only  revealed  never  exhausted, 
only  embodied  or  empowered  never  belittled  or 
enfeebled,  by  the  literal  symbols  in  which  human 
wisdom  contrives  to  house  it.  That  part  of  the 
letter  of  our  Constitution  which  best  reveals  the 
majestic  human  spirit  that  animates  our  polity  is 
of  course  its  preamble.  But  the  real  divinity  of 
the  nation,  its  vital  imperishable  holiness,  resides 
not  in  any  dead  parchment,  but  only  in  the  right 
eous  unselfish  lives  of  those  who  see  in  any  con 
stitution  but  the  luminous  letter  of  their  inward 
spiritual  faith,  but  the  visible  altar  of  their  invisible 
worship,  and  rally  around  it  therefore  with  the 
joyous  unshrinking  devotion  not  of  slaves  but  of 
men. 

Now,  such  being  the  undoubted  spirit  of  our 
polity,  what  taint  was  there  in  its  material  consti 
tution,  in  our  literal  maternal  inheritance,  to  affront 
this  righteous  paternal  spirit  and  balk  its  rich  prom 
ise,  by  turning  us  its  children  from  an  erect  sincere 
hopeful  and  loving  brotherhood  of  men  intent  upon 
universal  aims,  into  a  herd  of  greedy  luxurious 
swine,  into  a  band  of  unscrupulous  political  adven 
turers  and  sharpers,  the  stink  of  whose  corruption 
pervades  the  blue  spaces  of  ocean,  penetrates  Eu 
rope,  and  sickens  every  struggling  nascent  human 
hope  with  despair? 


32 


The  answer  leaps  at  the  ears ;  it  is  Slavery,  and 
Slavery  only.  This  is  the  poison  which  lurked  al 
most  harmless  at  first  in  our  body  politic,  and  to 
which  its  righteous  soul  is  an  utter  stranger;  this 
is  the  curse  we  inherited  from  the  maternal  Eng 
lish  Eve  out  of  whose  somewhat  loose  lascivious 
lap  we  sprung.  But  of  late  years  the  poison  has 
grown  so  rank  and  pervasive,  making  its  citadel, 
indeed,  the  very  heart  of  the  commonwealth,  or 
those  judicial  and  legislative  chambers  whence  all 
the  tides  of  its  activity  proceed,  that  each  succes 
sive  political  administration  of  the  country  proves 
more  recreant  to  humanity  than  its  predecessor, 
until  at  last  we  find  shameless  God-forsaken  men, 
holding  high  place  in  the  government,  become  so 
rabid  with  its  virus  as  to  mistake  its  slimy  purulent 
ooze  for  the  ruddy  tide  of  life,  and  commend  its 
foul  and  fetid  miasm  to  us  as  the  fragrant  breath 
of  assured  health.  It  is  easy  enough  to  falsify  the 
divinity  which  is  shaping  our  constitutional  action, 
wherever  a  will  exists  to  do  so.  Men  whose  most 
cherished  treasure  can  be  buttoned  up  in  their 
breeches  pocket,  and  whose  heart,  of  course,  is  with 
their  treasure,  are  doubtless  panting  to  convince 
the  country  that  we  have  already  done  enough 
for  honor,  and  the  sooner  a  sham  peace  is  hurried 
up  the  better.  It  only  needs  a  wily  wolf  of  this 
sort  to  endue  himself  here  and  there  in  sheep's 
clothing,  and  bleat  forth  a  cunning  pathetic  lament 
over  the  causeless  misfortunes  which  have  befallen 
our  bread-and-butter  interests,  to  see  dozens  of 


33 


stupid  sheep  taking  up  in  their  turn  the  sneaking 
hypocritical  bleat,  and  preparing  their  innocent 
fleece  for  his  dishonest  remorseless  shears.  The 
friends  of  Mammon  are  numerous  in  every  commu 
nity  ;  but;  blessed  be  God,  they  nowhere  rule  in  the 
long  run.  They  are  numerous  enough  to  give  an 
odious  flavor  to  the  broth ;  but  they  never  consti 
tute  its  body.  It  is  impossible  that  we  should  err 
in  this  great  crisis  of  our  destiny,  a  crisis  to  which 
that  of  our  national '  birth  or  independence  yields 
in  dignity  and  importance,  as  much  as  body  yields 
to  soul,  flesh  to  spirit,  childhood  to  manhood.  For 
this  is  the  exact  crisis  we  are  in ;  the  transition 
from  youth  to  manhood,  from  appearance  to  reality, 
from  passing  shadow  to  deathless  substance.  Every 
man  and  every  nation  of  men  encounters  some 
where  in  its  progress  a  critical  hour,  big  with  all 
its  future  fate;  and  woe  be  to  the  man,  woe  be 
to  the  nation,  who  believes  that  this  sacred  re 
sponsibility  can  be  trifled  with.  To  every  man 
and  to  every  nation  it  means  eternal  life  or  eter 
nal  death ;  eternal  liberty  or  eternal  law ;  the 
heaven  of  free  spontaneous  order,  or  the  hell  of 
enforced  prudential  obedience.  There  is  no  man 
who  hears  me  who  does  not  know  something  of 
this  bitter  sweat  and  agony ;  whose  petty  trivial 
cares  have  not  been  dignified  and  exalted  by  some 
glimpse  of  this  hidden  inward  fight ;  who  has  not 
at  times  heard  the  still  small  voice  of  truth  on 
the  one  hand  counselling  him  to  do  the  right 
thing  though  ruin  yawn  upon  his  hopes,  —  coun- 


34 


selling  him  to  force  liiimclf  to  do  the  honest  thing 
though  it  cost  him  tears  of  blood,  —  and  the  earth 
quake  voice  of  hell  on  the  other,  or  the  fiery 
breath  of  passion  infuriated  by  long  starvation, 
doing  its  best  to  drown  and  devour  it.  Our  na 
tional  life,  believe  me,  is  at  that  exact  pass  in 
this  awful  moment,  and  nowhere  else.  It  is  the 
hour  of  our  endless  rise  into  all  beautiful  human 
proportions,  into  all  celestial  vigor  and  beatitude, 
or  of  our  endless  decline  into  all  infernality  and 
uncleanness,  and  into  the  inevitable  torments  which 
alone  discipline  such  uncleanness.  And  we  must 
not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  fight  it  manfully 
out  to  its  smiling  blissful  end,  feeling  that  it  is 
not  our  own  battle  alone,  that  we  are  not  fight 
ing  for  our  own  country  only,  for  our  own  altars 
and  firesides  as  men  have  fought  hitherto,  but  for 
the  altars  and  firesides  of  universal  man,  for  the 
ineradicable  rights  of  human  nature  itself.  Let 
bloated  European  aristocracies  rejoice  in  our  calam 
ities  ;  let  the  mutton-headed  hereditary  legislators 
of  England  raise  a  shout  of  insult  and  exultation 
over  our  anticipated  downfall ;  the  honest,  unso 
phisticated  masses  everywhere  will  do  us  justice, 
for  they  will  soon  see,  spite  of  all  efforts  to  blind 
them,  that  we  occupy  in  this  supreme  moment  no 
petty  Thermopylae  guarding  some  paltry  Greece, 
but  the  broad  majestic  pass  that  commands  the 
deathless  wealth  and  worth  of  human-  nature  itself, 
the  Thermopylae  of  the  human  mind;  they  will 
soon  see,  in  fact,  that  our  flags  are  waving,  our 


35 


trumpets  sounding,  our  cannon  showering  their 
deathful  hail,  not  merely  to  avenge  men's  out 
raged  political  faith  and  honor,  but  to  vindicate 
the  inviolable  sanctity  of  the  human  form  itself, 
which  for  the  first  time  in  history  is  Divinely 
bound  up  with  that  faith  and  honor. 

This  is  the  exact  truth  of  the  case.     The  political 
tumble-down   we    have    met   with   is   no   accident, 
as  unprincipled  politicians  would  represent  it.     It 
is  the  fruit  of  an  inevitable  expansion  of  the  human 
mind   itself,  of  an   advancing   social   consciousness 
in  the  race,  an  ever-widening  sense  of  human  unity, 
which  will  no  longer  be  content  with  the  old  chan 
nels   of  thought,   the   old   used-up   clothes   of  the 
mind,  but  irresistibly  demands  larger  fields  of  spec 
ulation,  freer  bonds  of  intercourse  and  fellowship. 
We  have  only  frankly  to  acknowledge  this  great 
truth  in  order  to  find  the  perturbation  and  anxi 
ety  which  now  invade  our  unbelieving  bosoms  dis 
pelled  ;  in  order  to  hear  henceforth,  in  every  tone 
of  the  swelling   turbulence  that  fills  our  borders, 
no  longer  forebodings  of  disease,  despair,  and  death, 
but  prophecies  of  the  highest  health,  of  kindling 
hope,  of  exuberant  righteousness,  and  endless  feli 
city  for  every  man  of  woman  born.     "  I  was  once," 
says   an   old   writer,  "I  was   once   in  a  numerous 
crowd  of  spirits,  in  which  everything  appeared  at 
sixes    and    sevens :   they    complained,   saying    that 
now  a  total  destruction  was  at  hand,  for  in  that 
crowd  nothing  appeared  in  consociation,  but  every 
thing  loose  and  confused,  and  this  made  them  fear 


36 

destruction,  which  they  supposed  also  would  be 
total.  But  in  the  midst  of  their  confusion  and 
disquiet,  I  perceived  a  soft  sound,  angelically  sweet, 
in  which  was  nothing  but  what  was  orderly.  The 
angelic  choirs  thus  present  were  within  or  at  the 
centre,  and  the  crowd  of  persons  to  whom  ap 
pertained  what  was  disorderly  were  without  or  at 
the  circumference.  This  flowing  angelic  melody 
continued  a  long  time,  and  it  was  told  me  that 
hereby  was  signified  how  the  Lord  rules  confused 
and  disorderly  things  which  are  upon  the  surface, 
namely,  ly  virtue  of  a  pacific  principle  in  the  depths 
or  at  the  centre ;  whereby  the  disorderly  things  upon  the 
surface  are  reduced  to  order ,  each  being  restored  from 
the  error  of  its  nature''  The  pacific  and  restorative 
principle  which  in  the  same  way  underlies  all  our 
political  confusion  arid  disorder,  and  which  will 
irresistibly  shape  our  national  life  to  its  own  right 
eous  and  orderly  issues,  is  the  rising  sentiment  of 
human  society  or  fellowship,  the  grand,  invincible 
faith  of  man's  essential  unity  and  brotherhood. 
The  social  conscience,  the  conscience  of  what  is 
due  to  every  man  as  man,  having  the  same  divine 
origin  and  the  same  divine  destiny  with  all  other 
men,  is  becoming  preternaturally  quickened  in  our 
bosoms,  and  wroe  betide  the  church,  woe  betide 
the  state,  that  ventures  to  say  to  that  conscience, 
Thus  far  shalt  thou  go,  and  no  further ! 

Slavery  has  this  incredible  audacity.  Slavery, 
which  is  the  only  institution  of  our  European  in 
heritance  we  have  left  unmodified,  confronts  and 


37 


spits  upon  this  rising  tide  of  God's  righteousness 
in  the  soul  of  man.     Slavery  boldly  denies  what 
all   our   specific  culture  affirms,  namely,  the  invio 
lable  sanctity  of  human   affection   in   every  form, 
the  inviolable  freedom  of  human  thought  in  every 
direction.     The  cultivated  intelligence  of  the  race 
abhors  the  claim  of  any  human  being  to  possess 
an  absolute  property  in  any  other  being,  that  is,  a 
property  unvivified  by  the  other's  unforced,  spon 
taneous  gift.     Slavery  affirms  this  diabolic  preten 
sion,  —  affirms  the  unqualified  title  of  the  master  to 
outrage,  if  need  be,  the  sacredest  instincts  of  nat 
ural   affection   in  the  slave,  and   to  stifle  at  need 
his  feeblest  intellectual  expansion.    Accordingly,  the 
heart  of  man,  inspired  by  God  and  undepraved  by 
Mammon,  pronounces  slavery  with  no  misgiving  an 
unmitigated  infamy ;  and  the  intelligence  of  man, 
thence   enlightened,  declares  that  its  empire  shall 
not  be  extended.     We  have  no  right  to  say  that 
evil   shall   not   exist   where   it   already  does   exist 
without   our   privity  ;   but   we   have   not   only   all 
manner  of  right,  both   human  and  divine,  to  say 
that  its  existence  shall   not  be   promoted   by  our 
active  connivance;  it  is  our  paramount  wisdom  as 
men,  and  our  paramount  obligation  as  citizens,  to 
say  so.     Such,   at   all   events,   is   our   exact   social 
attitude  with  respect  to  slavery.     Every  unsophis 
ticated  soul  of  man  feels  it  to  be  what  it  actually 
is,  namely,  the  ultimate  or  most  general  form  and 
hence  the  king  of  all  the  evil  pent  up  in  human 
nature ;   so   that  when   it  once   disappears   by  the 


38 


clear  indignant  refusal  of  the  human  mind  any 
longer  actively  to  co-operate  with  it,  all  those  inte 
rior  and  subtler  shapes  of  evil  which  now  infest 
us,  and  are  held  together  by  it  as  the  viscera  of 
the  body  are  held  together  by  the  skin,  will  be 
dissipated  along  with  it.  We  know  not  when  the 
hour  of  this  great  salvation  shall  strike.  We  only 
know  that  as  God  is  just  and  sovereign  it  must 
strike  erelong,  and  that  when  it  does  strike  the 
morning  stars  of  a  richer  creation  than  has  yet 
been  seen  on  earth  will  sing  together,  and  all  the 
sons  of  God  in  every  subtlest  ineffable  realm  of  his 
dominion  shout  for  joy.  Our  government  itself  is 
waking  up  from  its  long  trance;  is  beginning  to 
perceive  that  there  is  something  sacreder  than  com 
merce  on  earth,  —  that  the  interests  of  this  very 
commerce,  in  fact,  will  best  be  promoted  by  first 
of  all  recognizing  that  there  are  depths  in  the  hu 
man  soul,  demands  of  immaculate  righteousness  and 
assured  peace,  which  all  the  pecuniary  prosperity 
of  the  world  can  never  satisfy.  In  short,  the  gov 
ernment  is  fast  coming,  let  us  hope,  to  a  conscious 
ness  of  its  distinctively  social  or  human  function, 
by  practically  confessing  that  its  supreme  respon 
sibility  is  due  only  to  man,  and  no  longer  to  per 
sons,  or  infuriated  sectional  exactions.  Of  course, 
in  pursuing  this  career,  it  will  become  gradually 
converted  from  the  mere  tool  it  has  hitherto  been 
for  adroit  political  knaves  to  do  what  they  please 
with,  into  a  grandly  social  force,  reflecting  every 
honest  human  want,  fulfilling  every  upright  human 


39 


aspiration.  What  matters  it,  then,  if  we  forfeit  the 
empty  political  prestige  we  have  hitherto  enjoyed 
with  European  statesmen?  Let  us  only  go  on  overt 
ly  to  inaugurate  that  promised  perfect  society  on 
earth,  all  whose  officers  shall  be  peace,  and  its  sole 
exactors  righteousness,  by  practically  acknowledging 
on  all  occasions  the  infinite  Divine  Good  enshrined 
in  man's  heart,  the  infinite  Divine  Truth  enthroned 
in  his  understanding,  and  we  shall  fast  attain  to 
a  social  standing  in  the  eyes  of  European  peoples 
which  shall  grandly  compensate  our  mere  political 
disasters,  and  do  more  to  modify  the  practice  of 
European  statesmen  themselves  than  anything  else 
vve  could  possibly  do. 

In  this  state  of  things,  how  jealously  should  we 
watch  the  Congress  to-day  assembling  at  Washing 
ton  !  How  clear  should  be  the  watchword  we- 
telegraph  to  guide  their  deliberations !  Have  ive 
indeed  no  higher  monition  for  our  legislature  than 
old  heathen  Rome  supplied  to  hers,  namely,  to  see 
that  the  Republic  suffer  no  damage?  The  body  is 
much,  but  it  is  not  the  soul.  The  Republic  is 
much,  but  it  is  not  all.  It  is  much  as  a  means, 
but  nothing  as  an  end.  It  is  much  as  a  means 
to  human  advancement,  but  nothing  as  its  con 
summation.  It  is  much  as  an  onward  march  of 
the  race,  it  is  nothing  whatever  as  its  final  victory 
and  rest.  Let  us  be  sure  that,  so  far  as  we  are 
concerned,  our  legislators  understand  this.  Let 
them  know  that  we  value  the  Republic  so  much, 
only  because  we  value  man  more ;  that  we  value 


40 


peace,  prosperity,  and  wealth  not  as  ends,  but  as 
means  to  an  end,  which  is  justice,  truth,  and  mer 
cy,  in  which  alone  man's  real  peace,  his  true  pros 
perity,  and  his  abiding  wealth  reside,  and  which 
will  be  ours  only  so  long  as  we  are  faithful  to  the 
gospel  of  human  freedom  and  equality.  For  my 
part,  if  I  thought  that  our  rulers  were  going  to 
betray  in  this  agonizing  hour  the  deathless  interest 
confided  to  them,  —  if  I  thought  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  Mr.  Seward  were  going  at  last  to  palter  with 
the  sublime  instincts  of  peace  and  righteousness 
that  elevated  them  to  power  and  give  them  all  their 
personal  prestige,  by  making  the  least  conceivable 
further  concession  to  the  obscene  demon  of  Slavery, 
—  then  I  could  joyfully  see  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr. 
Seward  scourged  from  the  sacred  eminence  they 
defile,  yea  more,  could  joyfully  see  our  boasted 
political  house  itself  laid  low  in  the  dust  forever, 
because  in  that  case  its  stainless  stars  and  stripes 
would  have  sunk  from  a  banner  of  freemen  into  a 
dishonored  badge  of  the  most  contemptible  people 
on  earth;  a  people  that  bartered  away  the  fairest 
spiritual  birthright  any  people  ever  yet  were  born 
to,  for  the  foulest  mess  of  material  pottage  ever 
concocted  of  shameless  lust  and  triumphant  fraud. 


APPENDIX. 


A.  — PAGE   10. 

THIS  able  but  unscrupulous  paper  is  an  involuntary  and  therefore 
most  reliable  witness  of  the  utter  worthlessness,  for  all  social  purposes,  of 
the  extremest  culture  of  the  head,  which  is  moral  culture,  when  weighed 
against  the  slenderest  culture  of  the  heart,  which  alone  is  spiritual  culture. 
It  seems  to  have  had  no  more  genuine  mission  than  to  show  the  rank  and 
festering  selfishness  which  has  eaten  out  the  vitals  of  the  old  European 
decency,  coming  now  at  last  to  the  surface  to  corrode  and  consume  every 
traditional  usage  of  humane  and  sympathetic  literary  art  which  has  hith 
erto  masked  its  presence  and  limited  its  activity.  If  the  Saturday  Review 
fairly  represent  the  scholarly  animus  of  England,  —  if  its  flippant,  trans 
parent  Pharisaism,  its  puerile  self-complacency,  its  wanton  insolence,  its 
truculent  arrogance,  exhibited  toward  every  form  of  intellectual  indepen 
dence,  —  except,  as  in  the  case  of  John  Mill,  where  a  great  reputation  sanc 
tifies  it,  —  and  toward  every  the  most  honest  suggestion  of  social  advance, 
fitly  represent  the  academical  consciousness  of  that  country,  —  one  can 
only  exclaim,  Alas !  how  changed  from  its  former  self !  A  land  (in  an  intel 
lectual  sense)  of  deserts  and  pits,  a  land  of  drought  and  the  shadow  of  death, 
a  land  no  man  passes  through,  and  where  no  man  dwells.  Certainly  honest 
John  Bull  was  never  before  so  sophisticated,  —  degraded  from  a  fat  savory 
succulent  juicy  beef,  to  a  lean  stringy  sinewy  tendinous  veal,  —  from  the 
superb  contented  disdainful  monarch  of  broad  meadows  and  glittering 
streams,  to  the  blatant  and  menacing  and  butting  challenger  of  every  in 
nocent  scarlet  rag  that  flutters  along  private  lane  or  public  highway.  It 
is  English  middle-class  manners  made  conscious  of  their  own  inmost  snob 
bery,  and  trying  to  cover  it  up  under  an  affectation  of  coarse  and  vulgar 
effrontery  towards  superior  people. 
6 


42 


B.  — PAGE   24. 

THE  State  as  a  civil  polity  is  wholly  contingent  upon  the  Church  as 
an  ecclesiasticism.  Thus,  throughout  European  history  you  see  the  Chris 
tian  priest  uniformly  consecrating  the  Christian  king.  In  the  earlier  in 
fantile  or  Catholic  centuries  this  beautiful  ritual  had  some  tender  human 
significance ;  but  it  is  now  a  senseless  ceremonial.  In  modern  Europe, 
just  as  in  old  Jud*a,  the  Church  no  longer  preserves  its  spiritual  priority 
to  the  State,  but  has  fallen  contentedly  behind  it ;  the  pure  feminine 
heart  of  the  world  succumbing  everywhere  to  the  needs  of  its  corrupt 
lordly  head.  The  great  Napoleon,  animated  with  the  spirit  and  armed 
with  the  prestige  of  the  Revolution,  felt  so  sheer  a  contempt  for  this  friv 
olous  European  priesthood  and  its  lapsed  prerogative,  that  he  did  not  hes 
itate  at  his  coronation  to  snatch  the  coronet  of  the  Empress  Josephine  from 
the  hands  of  the  officiating  priest  and  place  it  himself  on  her  brow ;  thus 
clearly  proclaiming,  by  a  great  symbolic  act  infinitely  beyond  his  own  be 
sotted  thought,  two  things  :  —  1.  That  the  veil  of  the  temple,  which  had 
hitherto  shut  out  the  people  from  the  holy  of  holies,  was  now  actually  as 
well  as  typically  rent ;  thus,  that  the  age  of  types  and  shadows  had  ex 
pired  by  its  own  limitation,  and  that  man  stood  henceforth  face  to  face 
with  spiritual  substance,  with  eternal  realities :  2.  That  upon  whomsoever 
the  people  should  confer  sovereignty,  they  conferred  sanctity  as  well,  or 
that  in  the  elect  of  the  people,  as  he  claimed  to  be,  priest  and  king,  good 
ness  and  truth,  right  and  might,  should  be  indissolubly  blent.  And 
you  now  see  the  present  Napoleon  diligently  finishing  up  what  his  prede 
cessor  began,  that  is  to  say,  depriving  the  first  clergyman  in  Europe  of 
all  right  to  his  slenderest  remaining  foothold  upon  her  soil ;  so  that  the 
Papacy  will  erelong  come  as  near  as  possible  to  justifying  the  theologic 
fiction  of  disembodied  existences,  and  sink,  like  those  curious  remains  of 
the  early  flora  and  fauna  of  the  earth  which  we  treasure  in  museums, 
into  a  mere  fossil  memorial  to  future  ages  of  the  giant  size  to  which,  in 
the  infancy  of  society,  men's  imbecility  and  presumption  in  respect  to 
Divine  things  had  attained. 

The  Church  with  us  is  of  course  exposed  to  no  such  coarse  imperial 
insult,  as  the  State  is  exposed  to  no  such  brutal  revolutionary  invasion. 
Why  ?  Simply  because  our  Church  and  State  are  both  of  them  purely 
social  institutions,  or  have  no  proper  life  apart  from  the  uses  they  promote 
to  the  great  society  which  maintains  them.  Our  Church  admits  of  all 
manner  of  sectarian  diversity ;  our  State  is  the  fusion  of  all  manner  of  na 
tional  oppugnancies :  because  the  only  altar  of  God  we  recognize  are  the 


43 


native  affections  of  the  human  bosom,  the  only  throne  of  God,  man's  scien 
tific  intelligence  ;  and  we  will  tolerate  no  priesthood  which  does  not  serve 
the  altar,  no  government  which  does  not  sustain  the  throne.  No  sect  is 
so  immodest  with  us  as  to  claim  to  be  the  Church,  because  every  sect  in 
proportion  to  its  light  feels  the  Church  to  be  a  purely  spiritual  and  there 
fore  invisible  quantity,  avouched  not  constituted,  revealed  not  estab 
lished,  by  these  visible  sectarian  contrarieties.  And  no  government  dare 
name  itself  the  State  with  us,  because  every  government  in  proportion  to 
its  purity  feels  the  State  to  be  a  purely  social  force,  made  up  of  the  total 
life,  physical  intellectual  and  moral,  of  the  community.  Occasionally 
some  juvenescent  Episcopalian,  or  some  belated  Roman  Catholic  con 
vert,  feels  his  ecclesiastical  gums  distending  and  inflaming  as  if  dentition 
were  going  at  once  to  ensue,  and  goes  drooling  about  the  streets  ac 
cordingly  as  if  the  Church  were  still  a  visible  power  even  in  these  lati 
tudes.  But  no  one  listens  to  him,  because  no  one  is  quite  goose  enough 
to  exchange  his  own  flexible  and  fresh  modern  raiment  for  the  disreputa 
ble  and  dilapidated  duds  which  any  Episcopal  or  Roman  Catholic  old- 
clo'  man  may  contrive  to  fish  up  out  of  our  ecclesiastical  Chatham  streets. 
So  also  occasionally  some  political  antiquary  takes  to  speculating  in  a  ret 
rograde  way,  and  fancies  that  we  ought  to  have  a  government  more 
absolute  than  we  have  ;  but  he  never  can  tell  where  such  a  government 
is  to  come  from  in  these  days,  and  so  the  speculation  harms  nobody  but 
himself,  by  dwarfing  him  intellectually  to  the  obsolete  dimensions  of  his 
grandmother. 


C.  —  PAGE   29. 

I  MAKE  no  apology  for  assuming  the  Christian  verity  as  undisputed  and 
indisputable,  for  my  oration  was  delivered  before  a  technically  Christian 
audience  ;  and  I  claim  a  philosophic  right  besides  to  avail  myself,  for  the 
ends  of  my  address,  of  the  highest  light  the  history  of  the  race  affords 
upon  the  truth  of  man's  destiny.  Philosophy,  indeed,  which,  like  Sense 
and  Science  both,  claims  a  light  every  way  answerable  to  her  peculiar 
needs,  finds  this  claim  met  only  in  Revelation.  For  Philosophy  alone 
takes  cognizance  of  what  is  spiritual  in  man,  and  it  has  no  commanding 
clew  to  such  knowledge  but  what  Revelation  yields  it.  Let  me  be  more 
explicit. 

There  are  three  realms  of  life  in  man,  one  exterior  or  physical,  one 
interior  or  psychical,  one  inmost  or  spiritual ;  or  one  realm  of  body,  one 
of  mind  or  soul,  and  one  of  spirit ;  and  each  of  these  realms  claims  its 


44 

proper  unity  or  organization,  the  first  being  sensibly  organized,  the  second 
being  scientifically  organized,  the  third  being  philosophically  organized. 
Now  each  of  these  organizations  or  unities  demands  of  course  its  own 
appropriate  light.  The  sun  is  the  light  of  sense.  Ileason  is  the  light  of 
science.  Revelation  is  the  light  of  philosophy.  Each  of  these  lights  is 
absolute  in  its  own  sphere,  and  good  for  nothing  out  of  it.  The  light  of 
the  sun  is  essential  to  my  bodily  health,  the  Jight  of  reason  to  my  mental 
health,  the  light  of  Revelation  to  my  spiritual  health.  But  if  I  attempt  to 
make  one  light  do  another's  duty,  I  infallibly  reduce  my  intelligence  to 
fatuity  on  the  one  hand,  or  exalt  it  to  madness  on  the  other.  For  these 
various  realms  of  life  in  man  agree  not  directly,  but  by  inversion  ;  their 
accord  is  one  not  of  continuity,  but  of  correspondence  ;  and  if,  accord 
ingly,  I  use  the  light  of  one  realm  to  illumine  the  objects  of  another  one, 
I  shall  only  be  able  to  see  things  upside  down,  and  hence  hopelessly  fal 
sify  my  own  understanding.  Thus  our  senses  make  us  acquainted  with 
finite  existence,  arid  demand  only  .the  light  of  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the 
stars ;  science  makes  us  acquainted  with  relative  existence,  and  demands, 
therefore,  a  purer  light  than  that  of  sense,  the  light  of  reason ;  but  philos 
ophy  alone  makes  us  acquainted  with  infinite  and  absolute  existence,  and 
it  demands,  consequently,  not  merely  a  subtler  light  than  that  of  nature, 
but  a  more  penetrating  and  less  flickering  one  than  that  of  reason,  even 
the  serene  and  steadfast  ray  of  Revelation. 

The  spiritual  world,  the  world  of  man's  true  immortality,  the  true 
realm  of  the  Divine  creation,  is  shut  up,  of  course,  to  the  experience  of 
its  subject,  or  confined  to  his  interior  consciousness,  defying  sensible  scru 
tiny  and  scientific  analysis  alike ;  so  that  we  should  have  been  forever 
utterly  incapable  of  discerning,  or  even  imagining  it,  were  it  not  for  the 
commanding  light  of  Revelation.  Revelation,  which  is  the  truth  of  the 
Divine  Incarnation,  teaches  us  that  there  is  no  life  of  man  so  abject,  no 
soul  of  man  so  infamous  in  a  purely  conventional  estimation,  or  when 
measured  by  mere  ecclesiastical  and  political  necessities,  in  which  the 
immaculate  Divine  Love  does  not  maintain  his  intimate  abode,  and 
which  he  will  not  one  day  visibly  irradiate  with  all  his  infinite  sanctity 
and  power.  It  declares  that,  in  spite  of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary, 
our  true  life  is  an  immortal  one,  not  derived  from  our  natural  progenitors, 
standing  in  no  natural  gifts  of  any  sort,  whether  of  beauty  or  wit  or  intel 
lect  or  temper,  much  less  in  any  purely  personal  accomplishments,  such 
as  wealth  or  learning  or  manners  or  station,  but  flowing  exclusively  from 
the  living  acknowledgment  of  the  Divine  name,  which  means  the  hearty 
practical  recognition  of  human  fellowship.  In  short,  Revelation  ascribes 
to  the  whole  human  race  the  unity  of  a  man  before  God,  having  but  one 
body  and  one  spirit,  one  Lord,  one  faith,  and  one  baptism,  one  God  and 


45 


Father  of  all,  who  is  above  all  and  through  all  and  in  all :  this  man  being 
evidently  social,  as  implying  such  a  unity  of  all  the  members  with  each 
individual  member  and  of  each  with  all  as  will  finally  obliterate  the 
iniquities  of  caste  upon  earth,  or  do  away  with  all  that  arbitrary  and  en 
forced  inequality  among  men  which  is  the  pregnant  source  of  our  existing 
vice  and  crime. 

Certainly  no  one  knows. better  than  I  do  that  this  reputed  light  of 
Revelation  is  professedly  very  much  honored  throughout  Christendom. 
But  it  is  only  the  comparatively  worthless  body  we  honor,  not  its  Divine 
and  life-giving  spirit.  For  practically  how  stands  the  case  ?  What  prac 
tical  use  do  we  apply  Revelation  to  ?  Why,  we  use  it  practically  very 
much  as  a  man  would  use  a  candle,  who,  after  lighting  it,  should  carefully 
put  it  away  under  a  bushel,  instead  of  exalting  it  where  it  might  give 
light  to  all  that  are  in  the  house.  Revelation  was  given  to  us  for  use,  not 
for  show  ;  and  its  use  plainly  is,  to  give  light  where  no  other  light  is  prac 
ticable,  namely,  in  relation  to  the  principles  of  the  Divine  administration 
in  human  affairs,  or  the  meaning  of  Providence  in  history.  But  we 
never  dream  of  applying  it  to  this  use.  We  pay  all  manner  of  reverence 
to  the  mere  body  or  letter  of  the  Revelation  ;  that  is,  we  textually  main 
tain  that  Christ  was  the  light  and  life  of  men,  and  textually  refute  or 
embarrass  those  who  would  disparage  his  pretensions  :  but  as  to  what  this 
great  light  illuminates,  and  what  this  great  life  ordains  and  organizes  in 
human  nature,  we  never  so  much  as  think  of  inquiring.  Surely  no  light 
is  designed  to  attract  attenti6n  to  itself,  but  only  to  dissipate  surrounding 
darkness.  If,  accordingly,  you  content  yourself  with  idly  gazing  at  the 
light,  or  idly  admiring  it,  you  entirely  forfeit  its  advantage,  and  lock 
yourself  up  in  deeper  and  deeper  darkness.  The  truest  honor  you  can 
pay  the  lamp  is  to  turn  your  back  upon  it,  and  look  at  the  space  over 
which  it  projects  its  illumination,  or  exerts  its  power.  For,  like  every 
thing  else  in  nature,  the  lamp  has  a  body  and  a  soul,  or  a  sphere  of  exist 
ence  and  a  sphere  of  power ;  the  former  being  its  visible  flame,  the  latter 
the  invisible  use  it  promotes  to  other  existence.  And  its  existence  is 
wholly  subordinate  to  its  use,  as  the  reader  may  see  at  a  glance.  For 
what  would  he  think  of  a  man  who,  after  lighting  his  lamp  in  the  even 
ing,  should  continue  steadfastly  gazing  into  its  flame,  instead  of  diligently 
availing  himself  of  its  light  to  go  about  his  business  V 

Now  this  illustrates  very  well  the  sort  of  moth-like  homage  we  pay  to 
the  blinding  and  bewildering  lamp  of  Revelation.  For  Revelation,  like 
the  lamp,  possesses  both  a  living  soul  and  an  obsequious  body,  both  a 
quickening  spirit  and  a  servile  letter ;  and  the  two  things  can  never  be  safely 
confounded.  The  letter  or  body  of  Revelation  is  made  up  of  all  the  per 
sonal  facts  recorded  in  the  four  Gospels  concerning  the  birth,  life,  death, 


46 


resurrection,  and  ascension  of  Jesus  Christ.     The  impersonal  meaning  of 
this  revelation,  the  spirit  of  this  remarkable  letter,  the  inmost  substance  of 
these  miraculous  facts,  is  that  actual,  but  still  most  unrecognized,  Divine 
life  which  is  now  palpitating  throughout  Christendom,  here  exalting  the 
lowly,  there  depressing  the  proud,  but  everywhere  and  at  all  times  smooth 
ing  inequalities,  removing  obstacles  to  human  unity,  reforming  abuses,  in 
tensifying  the  sense  of  wrong,  inflaming  the  just  indignation  of  men  against 
those  once  useful,  but  now  most  idle,  most  costly,  and  oppressive  institu 
tions  of  priesthood  and  government  under  which  the  whole  earth  groans, 
and  quickening  their  generous  aspirations  towards  a  kingdom  of  God 
which  shall  no  longer  be  a  mere  devout  sing-song,  an  abject  Sunday  par 
rotry  and  cant,  but  a  familiar  every-day  reality,  big  with  unmingled  right 
eousness  and  peace.     I  myself  have  a  devout  belief  in  the  Divine  Incar 
nation.     I  believe  in  it  with  such  extreme  good-will  that  I  seem  to  myself 
indeed  to  believe  in  comparatively  little  besides.     I  believe  that  the 
human  nature  was  forever  perfectly  placated  or  propitiated  towards  the 
Divine  in  the  experience  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.     I  believe  that  the 
Infinite  Love  touched  in  his  personality  the  lowest  point  conceivable  of 
human  degradation,  or  of  moral  abasement,  only  that  it  might  through 
that  contact  send  breezes  of  everlasting  health  and  refreshment  through 
the  lowest  and  densest  strata  of  human  existence,  and  so  finally  exalt  the 
lowliest  of  men  to  the  plenary  fellowship  of  His  own  power  and  purity. 
In  short,  I  believe  that  the  Divine  and  human  natures  having  become  in 
finitely  and  eternally  one  in  him,  it  will  not  be  long  before  the  most  intel 
ligent  minds  of  the  race,  becoming  scientifically  disabused  both  of  the 
Pagan  and  Jewish,  or.  Orthodox  and  Unitarian  conceptions  of  the  God 
head,  will  disdain  to  see  in  Deity  any  other  than  a  glorified  natural  man, 
or  the  infinitude  of  every  strictly  human  excellence.    But  what  good  does 
all  this  belief  of  mine  do  me,  if  it  bring  forth  no  practical  fruit ;  if  it  or 
ganize  no  just  confidence  in  me,  no  burning  hope,  no  fearless  effort  to 
wards  the  emancipation  of  universal  man  ?     What  is  the  use  of  acknowl 
edging,  what  is  the  use  of  having,  a  God  in  our  own  nature,  if  we,  the 
partakers  of  the  nature,  are  never  going  to  be  profited  by  the  circum 
stance  ?     Did  the  spotless  Judaean  lamb  lay  down  his  life,  —  for  we  are 
greatly  mistaken  in  supposing  that  any  one   took  it  from   him,  Judas 
or  anybody  else,  —  did  he  lay  down  his  life  on  his  own  behalf,  did  he 
rise  again  from  death  on  his  own  behalf,  did  he  ascend  on  high,  lead 
ing  captivity  captive,  only  that  he  might  thenceforth  wield  all  Divine 
power  for  some  private  personal  ends  of  his  own,  and  no  longer  for 
those  universal   ends   which    alone   engaged    his    sympathies  while   on 
earth,  the  ends  of  everlasting  righteousness  and  peace  and  plenty  to 
all  mankind?     If,  as  Revelation  bids  us  believe,  the  Most   High  is 


47 


really  incarnated  in  our  nature,  how  can  we  help  expecting,  how  can 
we  help  demanding  with  instant  urgency,  every  visible  fruit  of  that  stu 
pendous  mercy  in  our  public  and  private  life,  in  our  associated  and  indi 
vidual  history  ?  I  cannot  admit  the  right  of  any  sincere  professor  of  a 
belief  in  the  Christian  facts  to  blink  this  interrogatory.  For  my  part,  be 
lieving,  as  I  do  with  all  my  heart,  the  central  truth  of  Revelation,  which  is 
the  Divine  Incarnation,  I  can  see  nothing  in  all  past,  in  all  present,  and 
all  future  history,  but  the  clearer  and  clearer  exhibition  of  its  resist 
less  vitality.  Indeed,  the  light  which  this  deathless  but  discredited  truth 
sheds  upon  all  the  otherwise  inexplicable  facts  of  modern  life,  and  all  the 
otherwise  disheartening  tendencies  of  modern  thought,  is  altogether 
surprising  to  every  one  who  seeks  it ;  but  this  of  course  is  not  the  place  to 
do  justice  to  the  subject. 


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LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

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PAMPHLET  BINDER 

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=    Stockton,  Calif. 


N9   673903 

James,  H. 

The  social  signifi 
cance  of  our  institu 
tions. 


E286 

N67 

1861 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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